


Circus

by FrenchTwistResistance



Category: Designing Women
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-19 16:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22000906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance
Summary: Suzanne is upset about her recent date.
Relationships: Suzanne Sugarbaker/Mary Jo Shively
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	Circus

Julia’s placing ingredients into a blender, a smoothie emerging haphazardly as she adds and adds—kale and carrots and whey protein and whatnot—and presses buttons. Charlene is filing handwritten notes and dot-matrix printouts in the metal cabinets behind her. Mary Jo is slumped uncharacteristically silent at her desk, listlessly thumbing through a magazine. She looks dejected—pale and haggard and thoroughly not herself.

Sugarbakers’ door slams open.

It’s Suzanne, and she’s dramatically placing her fur coat on the rack and then striding over and flopping onto the settee.

They all look at her briefly and then return their eyes to their previous pursuits.

But Suzanne isn’t content with just that attention. She needs more. Especially today.

Suzanne whimpers, and maybe just one outside eyebrow is raised at that. 

Probably Charlene’s left eyebrow.

However many eyebrows by however many people is not enough. 

Suzanne huffs, whimpers again.

Julia pours the blender’s contents into an oversized coffee mug. Charlene swivels in her chair to place her elbows on her desk. Mary Jo concentrates harder on her magazine, licks a finger and turns a page.

There is a hard, taut silence. And then:

“I had a date last night,” Suzanne says.

There is electricity in the air but no real acknowledgement of what Suzanne has just said. 

Everyone is so inert. Too inert. There’s too much static electricity in everyone’s permed hair for it to be some neutral palatable inconsequential thing.

“I know y’all don’t want to hear about it,” Suzanne says. She looks toward Mary Jo, and they exchange a meaningful glance. “But where else have I got to talk about it?”

Charlene looks at her. They look at each each other.

Julia looks at her. They look at each other.

Then. Finally. She looks at Mary Jo. Mary Jo looks at her. Not a simple exchange of glances as all the others had been. They both scowl at each other.

They scowl at each other, and Suzanne’s words are still hanging in the air. “Date.” “Where else?” Ephemera. Ghosts. A haunting thing, grotesque and kind of mean.

The electricity is still there. It hasn’t found its natural release—a touch, a spark, a jump away with a huff of “damn it” under the breath.

“Y’all pretend to be on my side because you think you ought to. But when push comes to shove…” Suzanne says.

Julia fingers the chain of her reading glasses draped around her neck, says,

“What on God’s Green Earth are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about my Oppression, of course,” Suzanne says, folding her hands in her lap, trying for all the world to look smug.

Before rabid dog Julia can start in on that meaty bone, Charlene says,

“O-pression?” She draws it out, makes it sound like a newly learned word in a foreign language, all awe and wonder, no disdain or judgement whatsoever.

Suzanne gesticulates broadly, quickly, her hands working faster than her mouth as she says,

“Yes. Of course, I’m assumed to be so many things. I’d thought once I was done with men, I’d be done with this, too. But I’m not. I’m never done. And I’m especially never done with Dash Goff, the writer.”

A hush over Sugarbakers. No meaningless regular actions. Just silence and stillness. And then Suzanne resumes:

“I had a date last night. And I’d thought it was going well. We were in front of the fire on a bearskin rug. And just as things were heating up, she said, ‘You gonna leave me dazed, and wobbly, and squinty-eyed like some wrung-out old gas station dog’?” Suzanne glances around, sees she hasn’t gotten the reaction she’d hoped for, elucidates: “She didn’t want me! She wanted some idea of me! Some idea of me written by my ex-husband before I even knew I liked women!”

A slack-jawed silence.

“Really! I’d expect at least one of you to say something!” Suzanne says, a feral edge to her voice.

Suzanne scans the room, pointedly does not look in Mary Jo’s direction. 

Finally. Finally, Julia says,

“I’m sorry that happened to you. But really. Could you expect someone to think of you as someone who wasn’t a character? You are a character. The South is full of characters. And like it or not, you are one. The pageant queen. The duped debutante. Suppressed desires and latent longings. We love our characters, but we don’t wholly understand them. We don’t need to understand them because they understand themselves. We sit next to them on public transportation or at bingo and gossip with them and listen to them and love them. But they are who they are, distinct entities unto themselves. Mysteries and parables whom we love but don’t get and don’t try to.”

Suzanne listens to this typical Terminator tirade, tender in its way. She feels the truth of it. She also, tacitly, uncomfortably knows the ways it’s not true, knows how to be a femme fatale. She knows how to be the bad girl. Some evil entity, some horrible and manipulative woman in a southern gothic novel. Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, but not. Body as sexualized weapon, brain only good for bad. The character Dash Goff, the writer, had depicted. It’s a balancing act. As her whole life has been. Pretense, expectation, performance, reward. Use the right fork, say the right phrase, wear the right clothes. Win the competitions you can.

Win the competitions you can by any means necessary.

When Reggie Mac Dawson had bestowed upon her a circus, that had felt the most right, somehow. Suzanne under the big top, headdress and all. A show, too ridiculous for its own good.

Suzanne’s back in the present, and she huffs. She says,

“Maybe I am a character. But I’m too good a character for any of you to appreciate!” She gathers herself on the divan and then makes for the door.

Mary Jo finally stirs from her slumped position at her desk, eyes wild.

“I didn’t mean it like that!” Mary Jo shouts. “You’re the Rolls Royce of women, and I meant to say sex with you would wear me out. In a good way!”

Julia and Charlene are staring at Mary Jo, flabbergasted and searching.

Suzanne turns and blinks.

“There’s a good way? That’s news to me,” Suzanne says as she’s pulling her fur coat from the rack.

Mary Jo is gripping her forearm, saying:

“There is a good way. If you’d only trust me.”


End file.
